Florida Sets Term Limits for School Board Members
Image: Gage Skidmore
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed several bills into law this week targeting positive education reform, including reducing term limits for school board members.
The Governor signed five bills into law which all aim to improve Florida’s education for students and teachers alike. The bills include pay raises for educators, term limits for “rogue” school board members, reigning in politicized teachers’ unions, removing TikTok from the classroom, and more.
“For far too long, unions and rogue school boards have pushed around our teachers, misused government funds for political purposes, taken money from teachers’ pockets to steer it for purposes other than representation of teachers, and sheltered their true political goals from the educators they purport to represent.”
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis
SB 256 prevents teachers’ unions from using state government resources to deduct fees from teachers’ personal paychecks. HB 1537 extends temporary teaching certificates from three years to five years, which will remove “unnecessary bureaucratic requirements” for teachers in the state. Governor DeSantis also announced increasing the state budget for teachers’ salaries to more than $1 billion for the year. Florida has, over the last five years, continuously increased teacher pay and bonuses, hoping to reward educators who focus on educating — rather than indoctrinating.
HB 477 reduces term limits for school board members from 12 years down to 8 years, to match that of the Florida governor, and state legislature. Many conservatives applaud this decision because it gives parents better control over who is leading their child’s school district.
Earlier this year, Governor DeSantis released a list of 14 school board members around the state he planned to “target” because they “do not protect parental rights and have failed to protect students from woke ideologies.”
In addition to reducing term limits, the Governor also signed HB 379 into law, which aims to remove social media from all classroom instruction, and gives teachers the additional authority to confiscate students’ personal devices while at school. Teachers around the country have been up against a wave of students who are cell phone addicted and are willing to violently react if their devices are withheld from them. In Tennessee, a teen girl was recently caught on video pepper spraying a teacher who confiscated her cell phone.
By passing HB 379, Florida’s lawmakers are hoping to always give teachers the legal benefit of the doubt when it comes to making decisions regarding the use of devices in the classroom. The law also instructs school districts to block social media sites on wifi provided at the school, this will include blocking CCP-owned social media company TikTok.
